Category: self-employment

I forget who it was that taught me this little gem but in my experience, it has turned out to be true. If you want to insure that you accomplish things, write them down on a list. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you write them on paper with a pen or pencil or you type them into a computer. The relevant thing is that you’ve spent the time thinking about them and formulating them into words and as you write or type them, you are, in effect, programming your brain to accomplish them. I often don’t even bother to check the items off the list as I accomplish them. Just making the list is enough to focus my intent. I occasionally run across lists that I’ve made, either in old notebooks or in files in some obscure sub-directory of my Documents folder, and I’ll look at them and discover that I’ve accomplished most, if not all, of the items on the list.

So, I want to make some goals for myself. There are three categories of goals that I intend to attempt to capture today:

Health goals

Project goals

Financial goals

Let’s take Health goals first.

I want to lose at least 10 pouinds between the initial weigh in and the final weigh in of the “Scale Back Alabama” competition.

I want to maintain my habit of writing for at least 30 minutes a day (nominally between 10:00pm and 10:30pm).

I want to start posting to my blog, Occasional Comment (here) at least five times a week.

I want to finish the Radiosonde data analysis project for Bob.

I want to present at least once a quarter to the lunch and learn at work for a total of five times this year.

I want to write at least a science fiction short story and perhaps even a novel.

I want to finish the pilot of The Gentry.

And finally, some Financial goals:

I want to get completely out of debt.

I want to start a successful small consulting business to retire to.

I want to be able to save at least 20% of my income while paying all of my bills and having a comfortable lifestyle.

I want to have the money to get the house fixed up.

I want to be independently wealthy so long as it harms no one.

So there are my lists for now. I’m putting them out there. I’ll come back and check periodically to see how many items I’ve accomplished. I’ll probably write some more posts about them as events unfold.

I recently read a book called Getting Real by the folks from 37signals, creators of Ruby on Rails, Ta-da List, Writeboard, Backpack, and Basecamp among other Ajaxian web application goodness. While superficially a book about how to start a successful business selling services based on web applications, a topic they have plenty of credibility with, the advice in this book is applicable to a much broader realm of endeavors.

I was so inspired by it that I have dusted off several projects that were laying dormant and started actively doing them again. Of course this is also aided by the insights that I have been gleaning from the Getting Things Done book. I have also bought a Backpack Basic account so that I can use their wonderful calendar. Enough raving for now. Got to get some things done :-).

No, not the board game. I’m talking about taking risks in life. In order to accomplish anything out of the ordinary, you have to take risks. The key thing to remember is to do everything you can to bound your risks. I’ve been thinking about how to do this a lot lately.

I want to pursue other career options but I am over 50 and I have to think about the risk of age discrimination. Not in the careers that I have in mind, which are all variations on the theme of self-employment, but rather as relates to my fall-back position. What if I don’t make a go of being self employed and have to go back to work as a (gasp) employee? How do I mitigate the risk that I might not find anyone that wants to hire me because I’m over 50?

So I’ve been thinking about how to ease into this change. How to dip my toes in and test the water before I quit the day job. The problem is, I don’t know if I have the stamina to hold both a day job and work on a start-up at night anymore. And the other consideration that looms large in my mind is the cost of insurance. I have good insurance where I work. How do I ensure that I have uninterrupted insurance when I take the leap to self-employment.

It certainly is a lot to think about. Right now I’m not real worried about these issues because I’m a long way from taking the plunge. But if I plan on ever doing anything of this sort, I need to start making progress in that direction.